Mentors

A thank‑you to the mentors who shaped our journey at Wirehive and beyond: Spencer Gallagher and Peter Hoole of Cactus, and Dominic Monkhouse, whose guidance helped us grow with discipline, prepare for exit, and scale well inside Pax8.

Every founder’s journey is shaped by the people who give you time, challenge your assumptions, and back you when it matters. These are three of mine.

Spencer Gallagher & Peter Hoole

Founding partners, Cactus • Co-authors, Agencynomics

Spencer and Peter built their reputations in the agency world, first by doing the hard yards themselves, then by helping others grow. Spencer founded and exited the digital agency Bluhalo in 2008, before going on to co‑found Cactus, a leading consultancy for independent agencies. He also co‑created the Agencyphonics community and podcast. Spencer and Peter co‑authored Agencynomics, a widely used field guide for scaling agencies.

🌟

Spencer’s career-long lessons on pace, positioning, and people still shape how I think and lead today. He opened doors early, connecting me and Wirehive into his agency network so we could carve out our niche faster than would ever have been possible on our own. I’ll be forever grateful to Spencer for that belief and generosity.

Peter’s craft is finance and operations. As a co‑founder of Cactus and a long‑time acting CFO for high‑growth agencies, he’s known for putting in place the numbers, cadence and governance that let creative businesses scale and become attractive to acquirers.

How they helped us

Peter was our first Non‑Exec at Wirehive. He then joined with Spencer to form Cactus and they supported us together all the way through to our acquisition by Pax8. In practice, their support looked like:

  • Board rhythm and clarity. Setting a proper operating cadence, board packs, and a handful of vital metrics we could all rally behind.
  • Commercial foundations. Tightening pricing, margin discipline, and service mix.
  • Market positioning and pipeline. Sharpening our proposition, professionalising new‑business habits, and pressure‑testing the story we took to market.
  • M&A readiness. Getting our house in order earlier than we thought we needed to, so that when interest became intent, diligence ran smoothly and we were “always ready” rather than “rushing to be ready”.
  • Wirehive 100. They were instrumental in helping us get Wirehive 100 from a seed of an idea to reality.

Dominic Monkhouse

Founder, Monkhouse & Company • Scale‑up coach • Author, *Mind Your Fking Business***

Dom has scaled two UK tech firms from zero to roughly £30m in five years as Managing Director at Rackspace UK and Peer 1 Hosting. During his tenure Peer 1 more than doubled global revenue and later sold for around $635m. Today he coaches founder‑led firms on culture, leadership and execution, and writes about the no‑nonsense methods that create high‑performing teams.

A few pillars shaped how we operated:

  • Customer‑led growth with NPS. Dom is vocal about Net Promoter Score as a north‑star for delight and retention. We embedded the habit of listening hard, fixing root causes, and using NPS as a board‑level drumbeat.
  • Leadership rhythm and off‑sites that matter. He advocates regular, well‑designed off‑sites to reset focus, kill distractions and align on the next 90 days. That cadence helped us keep momentum through change.
  • Hiring and culture as the system. His coaching emphasises A‑player hiring, clear accountabilities and the humility to test, learn and adapt. Through this we also met Debby Clement who was instrumental in us bringing in great people.

Dom advised us from 2018, through the acquisition and into the first couple of years at Pax8, when the challenge shifted from “build” to “scale without losing what made us different”.

A milestone we’re proud of

In January 2021, Pax8 acquired Wirehive. That outcome rests on years of disciplined growth and the steady, generous involvement of Spencer, Peter and Dom. Thank you for holding us to a higher standard and for making the journey better as well as faster.